


Feliz Navidad

by tzzzz



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Family Secrets, Gen, M/M, Pining, Pining John Sheppard, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzzzz/pseuds/tzzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For John's birthday, Jack gives him a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feliz Navidad

Another year older, another trip back to Earth, another year when John didn't get to be with Rodney McKay. It didn't seem fair. Scratch that. It wasn't fair, but then again when John thought about it, he was actually coming out ahead. He wasn't sick or starving. He had wonderful friends. He was a colonel and he still got to fly the best spaceships around. He had a beautiful ocean view. And he was an honest to god space explorer. Sure, he'd missed the boat on the picket fence and the 2.5 kids, the family fortune, the father who cared for him, and he was about to miss out on the man of his dreams too, but considering how many times he'd not died when (if he were being honest) he most definitely should have, well, he wasn't exactly in the position to ask the universe any more favors.

But, it was his birthday and he was stuck in meetings a mile under a mountain on a planet he no longer considered home. He was in the very least entitled to a little sulk.

"Feliz navidad," General O'Neill said. It could be worse. It could be an IOA meeting. 

"Merry Christmas?"

"Happy birthday. Awful thing to do, stick a man with his annual performance review on his birthday." Actually, it was a bit of a lifesaver. After last year's incredible debacle in which someone had the bright idea of a surprise party, but failed to fully explain the custom to Ronon, John was happy to escape with his eyebrows, not to mention his dignity, intact.

"It was supposed to happen a month and a half ago, but then there was the thing with Todd and the Genii coupe and the exploding tribbles and the situation on the swamp planet and the other thing with Todd and Torren's first birthday ceremony thing and the bodyswapping fiasco and the false alarm on the ZPM factory and the other other thing with Todd. Maybe I should just shoot him while I'm ahead. Anyway, you get the picture, General."

"Sounds familiar. So, I'm supposed to be going over your major decisions in the past year and do a dual evaluation of them, but it doesn't seem as though you did anything I wouldn't have done. Except the "incident" with McKay and the invisibility cannon."

"One time event, Sir. Won't happen again."

"Good. And since we agree on everything else, there's really no point in sitting around her patting each other on the backs for our maverick style."

"Maverick, sir?"

"Richard kept telling me that about you and I decided I liked it. So, how do you feel about steaks?"

That's how a 24 oz New York Strip and five beers later, John found himself across the booth from a General, looking morosely into his beer. 

"So, informal evaluation time," the general remarked, poking his stack of fries as if checking for signs of life. "How's it going in my second favorite galaxy? I mean, between Woolsey and McKay, I'm surprised you have so much hair. I'd be tearing mine out."

John had to laugh at the image. Though he wasn't sure Rodney would be more or less annoying if John's hairline started to match his. "Woolsey's no Carter," and god did John want her back. Not that O'Neill would let him, of course. He was very proprietary of his ex-teammates, especially Jackson.

"Yeah, not happening."

"But he's starting to loosen up a little. I even saw him in khakis once."

"Small steps."

"And Rodney is just Rodney. I'm not sure if he's actually gotten less annoying or if I've gotten used to him."

"Trust me, he may have changed, but he's still annoying as crap. The only explanation is that you've become immune."

Maybe it was the drinks, but John was suddenly filled with righteous indignation. Sure, Rodney had his quirks. He had a lot of them. And even John got thoroughly pissed off at him sometimes, but he was a member of John's team, a friend, and someone John had been fantasizing about for more than five years now. O'Neill didn't know him. He'd barely seen him since the time he'd almost killed a member of O'Neill's hallowed SG1. Even Carter had come around to like him, despite the fact that she had every reason to hold a grudge. "He's not that bad," John slurred a little. "Really. He's brave, even if he has to freak out for about ten minutes before and after. Smart, obviously. Funny, in a geeky sort of way. And he cares. It's obvious even though he tries to hide it. Even the way he rants and screams and panics and has little egogasms over his own brilliance seems to be an effective management strategy for what he does."

"Wow, Sheppard, you really like the guy. Who would have thought?"

"He's my friend." John spit out proudly. Seriously, he really should cut himself off. That had crossed the line into actual sentiment.

O'Neill eyed him skeptically, a look of sudden realization spreading across his features. "You more than like the guy."

Yeah, John loved him. "The way a friend more than likes a friend, Sir."

"Fine, fine, don't tell. Though a little birdie told me that won't be a problem much longer."

"Did that little birdie happen to be the president?"

"Not so little birdie, then. But you don't have to tell me, Sheppard. I really don't give a rat's ass either way. But I'm just saying, if anything happened to slip out, to anyone, I'd be the last person who would get up from watching the Simpsons to do anything about it. Too much paperwork."

"That's really nice of you, Sir." O'Neill really was a stand-up guy. Even when John wasn't so inebriated. "But you really don't have to worry. McKay is in a serious relationship." John considered adding 'and I'm not gay' to the end of that, but if what O'Neill said about the presidential birdie really was true, then he'd come off as a complete ass if he decided to exit the closet later. 

"I find that hard to believe. With a woman?"

"Yes, with Dr. Keller. You've met her, right?"

O'Neill leaned back suddenly, a frown creasing his brow. He looked honestly troubled. "Jennifer Keller?"

"It's not that far out there. Sure, she's a lot younger, but Rodney's eighteen tops in maturity. And he does have his redeeming qualities."

"Rodney McKay and Jennifer?" Okay, that was kind of weird. O'Neill wouldn't be on a first name basis with her if they'd just met. Would he? Maybe they'd had sex. That would explain O'Neill's disturbed expression. Rodney and the general had banged the same woman? Gross. 

"It's true."

"I, um. I have to take a piss."

While the general was gone, John sat and let the alchol settle. Bad idea, since it tended to make him either very horny (not an option with a four star general as his drinking buddy) or completely maudlin. "Fuck, Rodney," he whispered to himself. Maudlin it was. Rodney was straight. He was going to marry a perky blond just like he'd always wanted. A young perky blonde, young and smart enough to push out the 2.5 geniuses Rodney had always secretly wanted. And John would be the best man at his wedding. He'd watch Rodney kiss the bride and he's smile and pretend that his heart wasn't breaking and hadn't been for the past five years. This was really it: the begining of the end.

"I'm forty-one years old," John began, as soon as O'Neill poured himself back into his seat, the leather squeaking to announce his presence.

"Midlife crisis?"

"Don't have the time." Or the inclination. What kind of sports car was he going to buy when his main form of transportation was an invisible spaceship?

"I had one of those once. About your age, actually."

"What happened?"

"Took two scientists and an alien and formed a team."

"The good kind, then."

"I also had a kid."

"What?" John nearly choked on his sixth beer. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know you had any children." He'd heard a rumor about O'Neill's son shooting himself with the general's gun, but that had been long before the beginning of the Stargate program.

"Not many people do. It was one of those unexpected surprises, courtesy of the gate and the crazy shit that happens when you step through it."

"Aliens made you do it?" That was a familiar adage in Pegasus, where the Wraith forced local cultures into all kinds of strange traditions just to maintain their population. 

"Not so much. It's complicated. First we visited a planet with a virus that turned people primitive. I'm talking full on caveman. And one of the things cavemen like to do is obviously to fuck. We were quarantined fairly quickly, but not before Carter and I were infected. She jumped me. Something about women selecting the leaders of their tribe or some nonsense like that. I dragged her off to the infirmary, but I had a little viral blackout myself on the way there."

"You and Sam?" She'd always spoken fondly about her commanding officer, of course, but John had never once pictured them together. He'd actually thought she might end up with Rodney.

"While under the influence of an alien virus, apparently. But it was the early days of the SGC. As soon as we were cured we went back to the planet, no time for thorough checks. And the only post mission exams those days were just to check for Goa'uld, before we knew everything else out there. So it went unnoticed for a bit."

"So she took leave?" John was sure someone would have remembered that.

"No. Because then we went to this other planet, where a Goa'uld had been experimenting with human evolution and the people only lived for a day. Turned out to be nanites."

"God, I hate those things."

"Join the club. These weren't replicators, though. They depended on a signal originating on the planet in order to function, but since growing a baby from conception to puberty took about half a month and depended on a period of rapid growth rather than activaction only at night like the rest of the people on the planet, it was automatic. Sam manage to get infected when the nanites escaped containment while she was looking for a cure. One day she finds a cure for the rest of us, the next she's as big as a whale, the next she gave birth and twelve days later we had a nanite-free twelve-year-old girl."

"What happened to her?" Sam had never mentioned anything. There were no pictures, so they hadn't raised the girl themselves.

"Know my fishing cabin? Well, lets just say I wasn't just using it for fishing. Friend of mine, a retired military doc, had a house up there. He and his wife lost their son to bone cancer, but were too old to conceive another one. And they were discreet. Sam and I would go visit her every now and then, but I always felt detched from it. I'd blinked and she was a full grown woman. I don't even remember conceiving her. Plus General Hammond was pretty good at the whole, 'your planet needs you' speech. I was proud of her, though. Sam's intelligence, without a doubt. And her hair. She was home schooled in order to catch up and she just kept going at that rate when she went to college. Graduated in two years. Finished med school in three. The SGC recruited her right away."

John didn't want to believe it. But it made so much sense. Why anyone would have trusted a twenty-five year old with the health of an entire base if she hadn't been the daughter of their go-to girl and their most famous commander, he had no idea. And the weird upbringing certainly explained how such a beautiful woman could be so awkward. It even explained Rodney's attraction. Samantha Carter was supposedly his first true love. "Dr. Keller is your daughter."

"Got it in one."

"Does she know?"

"She didn't for a long time. Sam told her when she was on Atlantis."

"Does Rodney know?"

"I haven't gotten a long ranting email from him, so I'd guess probably not."

"Do you want me to tell him?"

"As much as the idea of my genes mixing in any way with his leaves a sour taste in my mouth, I think that's up to you." Jack winked, signaling the waitress for a check.

"He won't be able to handle it," John murmured to himself. He'd worry about the implications of sleeping with someone who turned out to be even younger than he'd thought in terms of experience. He'd mull over the psychological consequences of dating an old crush's daughter. He would flip the fuck out and either break up with her or drive her so crazy that she'd break up with him and John would be there to pick up the pieces of Rodney's dream of being with a normal girl, since even Jennifer turned out to be far from normal. 

"Happy birthday, Sheppard," O'Neill said.

Some birthday present. Now John had a choice to make.


End file.
